Beer, pretzels and social engagement

 Beer and pretzel games have been a part of the hobby for a long time. (Not to be confused with pub games which have been a part of the culture for a loooooooong time. But Crown and Anchor apparently doesn’t count as beer and pretzel games, even though that’s what you are eating and drinking when you play it) I think beer and pretzel games are party games for folks who want to say they don’t like party games lol  

Wikipedia defines beer and pretzel games as light tabletop games that have light theming and lots of luck. It also says that the term originated for simple war games before breaking out into the broader world. I personally define beer and pretzel games as ones where you can trash talk during the entire game.

It would be easy today ‘I don’t know what a beer and pretzels game but I know one when I see them’ but that’s not true. There are some key elements. It has to have some kind of theme. It has to have a lot of luck. It has to be easy to learn. It has to have social engagement.

I was going to write fun but all games are supposed to be fun. Social engagement is a better fit. Because a beer and pretzel game is what you pull out so you and your mates can sit back and blow off steam together.

Chess. Chess is not beer and pretzels. Munchkin is beer and pretzels. And in my world, Chess is fun but Munchkin is not lol

The Wikipedia article added one additional criteria. A beer and pretzel game has to be replayable. It has to be a game that you want to go back to.  So a good beer and pretzel game has to balance chaos, let you surf the madness but still give you some agency. Your choices matter but you might not know their outcome.

Beer and pretzel games are not going to be strategic masterpieces. Instead, they are the games that become part of the folklore of your gaming group. They are the games you remember because of the time Marcy made a move that made Linus throw the popcorn bucket at her.

Clearly, the social component is the defining attribute of a beer and pretzel game. The Friday night poker game can be a beer and pretzels experiences. The World Series of Poker never will be.

Still, as games like Munchkin and Nuclear War are clearly designed to fit the beer and pretzels mold. You can’t guarantee the result but you can build towards it.

Beer and pretzel games didn’t create a new social experience. I’m sure people have been chewing the fat and teasing each other since the Hunter and gatherer days. But they do give us a safe and consistent environment for the experience.

Beards and Booty is a beer and pretzels joy

I went into Beards and Booty with meh expectations but I was pleasantly surprised by how it played out. Nothing in Beards and Booty is original or innovative but it all came together in a way that really worked for me.

Beards and Booty is a game about pirates fighting other pirates or sea monsters. It’s a Print and Play game where all you print out are play mats. No other construction necessary. Just add dice and a few tokens.

The game comes in a few different modes. The original multiplayer mode just has everyone grab their own pirate and beat each other up. You add in the sea monsters for solitaire, semi-cooperative and fully cooperative mode. 

Each pirate and sea monster has their own play mat. Pirates have tracks for reputation/health and gold, a menu of dice driven actions, spaces for tracking rolls and special gold driven powers. Sea monsters just have a health track and a menu of dice powers.

Yes, our old friend Yahtzee is back to be the driving force behind the game. Which I am completely fine with. Yahtzee, as a standalone game, only works in my opinion as a solitaire. It is too dry and turns take too long to work as a multiplayer game. Multiplayer solitaire games work best with simultaneous turns. However, when you add theme and additional mechanics to Yahtzee, then the limited dice control that you get becomes interesting.

Beards and Booty makes one twist in the Yahtzee formula. While you roll all five dice at the start of your turn, each dice can be rolled up to three times. There are spots on the mat to help you keep track of how many times you’ve rolled each dice. So you can roll more than three times. This usually hasn’t been the case for my plays but this does give you a chance for Hail Mary plays.

I recently learned another game that uses Yahtzee as its base, Roll Crawl. However, Roll Crawl uses a smaller dice pool and a very limited number of actions per character. Beards and Booty uses the full range of Yahtzee combinations, although the more powerful actions require specific pips which vary depending on each pirate.

You can do damage, heal up damage and get gold. Gold is used to pay for special actions. Every pirate has a different set and that’s the only real difference between pirates.

Sea Monsters work differently. Whatever dice you don’t use for a dice combination becomes their dice pool which gets rolled once. Each monster has a different menu of attacks so each one has its own feel. They also each have three levels of difficulty and the higher levels are legitimately harder.

So why do I like Beards and Booty? Chuck dice and do damage. That’s pretty much standard operating procedure for what have to be hundreds, if not thousands, of games.

It’s because it has such a rich Beer and Pretzels vibe to it. Between the big, goofy pictures of the pirates and monsters, the big menu of options and the special powers which, at the right time, seem too good, Beards and Booty just has a strong sense of fun. It’s not a game for serious play but it definitely clicks for silly, casual, trash talking play.

More than that, Beards and Booty does it with very few moving parts. In my experience, Beer and Pretzel games have a big stack of cards and/or chunky plastic pieces. Which awesome because experience is a big part of Beer and Pretzels. But cramming that into a few sheets of paper, plus some dice, that’s cool and convenient.

I would be lying if I said that Beards and Booty was the game I didn’t know I was looking for. Because I have been looking for a casual, take that, Beer and Pretzels, print and play game. All of the likely candidates that I have found he involved making thick decks of cards. Finding one with minimalist components that I think really works, that’s just ideal. I bought it with solitary play in mind, but I can really picture getting all the play sheets printed in color and laminating them so that I have a game I can put into a folder and take anywhere.

Beards and Booty is a niche game. There are a lot of people I wouldn’t play it with and there are a lot of times I wouldn’t pull it out for the folks I would play it with. However, it is a game I’m glad to have found.

Do beer and pretzel games need big stacks of cards?

Finishing up the PnP version of Goblin’s Breakfast got me thinking about Beer and Pretzel games, since it’s a beer and pretzel game as well as a take that game and a family game. 

Beer and Pretzels isn’t (aren’t?) my favorite genre of games but I do like having a few around. They definitely have a niche. There is a time and place for a rough-and-tumble casual game with room for trash talk and turning off your brain. (College seems to be a prime time to be that time)

But I found myself thinking about Beer and Pretzel Games I’ve played like Nuclear War or Chez Geek or Guillotine or Lunch Money and they all have lots of cards. 

Which makes sense.  Having lots of cards is a way of having a high random factor and room to have lots of jokes or other silly stuff. I mean, I hate, hate the mechanics of Munchkin with the fire of a super nova but John Kovalic did draw some funny cartoons for it.

I don’t know if this makes any sense of having a big deck of action cards lets a game do some of the thinking for you. And that would normally be terrible but works for Beer and Pretzel Games.

BUT... can pure dice games be Beer and Pretzel games? For instance, is Zombie Dice a Beer and Pretzel game? It doesn’t have cards and it doesn’t have any that that but it is casual and thematic and makes people laugh. Would have I played it at three AM in college after a marathon session of D&D?

The answer is almost assuredly yes so a game that consists of a handful of dice, doesn’t have a stack of cards or a way to hurt other folks can still be a Beer and Pretzel game. I can even see an argument that Liars Dice can be a Beer and Pretzel game so even the silly theme is optional.

At the same time, lots of action cards and a fun theme seems like they help a lot. If I woke up tomorrow and decided that it was my new life goal to make a Beer and Pretzel game, that’s where I’d start.

Print and play Beer and Pretzel game

This is my personal definition of a Beer and Pretzels game: a game where everyone is talking smack. 

Sure, it has to be easy to learn and fun and funny but there are plenty of non-Beer and Pretzels games like that. For me, you need some good natured in-your-face. Wikipedia mentions Bohnanza as a Beer and Pretzels game but not in my book.

I realized I really haven’t crafted many Beer and Pretzel games, although my focus on solitaire hasn’t helped. Still, I’m not sure what PnP games really fit my bill.

I do have the Dragon Magazine archives, which I bought ages ago which means I also bought PDFs of the board games that were occasionally inserts in Dragon. In the name of Beer and Pretzels, I’m planning on crafting some of them.

Even though I own the Steve Jackson boxed version, I’m starting with Snits Revenge because I should finally play the darn game after all these years and I can make a better board than the flimsy paper thing in the box. And it’s fits the Beer and Pretzel mold and it’s for two players, which isn’t the number I usually associate with Beer and Pretzels games.

Look, a major reason that I play games is to relax and to blow off steam. And sometimes, having the fun of beating the tar out of each other is a good way of blowing off steam.

I do enjoy is zen-like, meditative games. I have crafted quite a few of them. And they are definitely a great way for giving my brain a coffee break. However, I think we also need the other end of the spectrum.

Honestly, I don’t have a _real_ reason to look for Beer and Pretzel PnP. I have plenty of copies of published games that fit the bill. But I’m having fun crafting games so I’m looking for some.